The present invention relates to a computer operation management system in which a plurality of computers are connected via a network to a managing computer for managing these computers.
Japanese periodicals “NIKKEI COMPUTER” (issued on Jan. 22, 1996, in pages 115 to 117), and “NIKKEI OPEN SYSTEM” (issued in June, 1997, No. 51, pages 234 to 239) describe the following conventional computer systems. That is, in these conventional computer systems, the functions for executing the operation processes are provided as independent programs. As the operation processes, there are the controls of turning ON/OFF the power supply, the job execution control, the print control, and the like. Also, these Japanese periodicals describe that the function for managing the conditions of the computers and the communication network is provided as a program independent from a product for controlling/monitoring the executions of the above-described operations.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,619,655 entitled “System for administration and management of network from remote or central station through an operator interface which prepare and stores the management orders for execution” and U.S. Pat. No. 5,642,508 entitled “Distributed control method and apparatus for job execution” disclose approaches for performing network management and job execution management as independent operations at remote management stations.
As a result, in these computer systems, with respect to each of the respective computers, or each of the operation processes executed in the respective computers, a display monitor screen used to confirm the definition of the execution schedule for this operation process, and also the display screen used to confirm the execution result of each of the operation processes are constituted. Furthermore, the screen used to confirm the conditions of the computers and the communication network is arranged as a separate screen from the above-described management screens for the operation processes.
The above-mentioned conventional computer systems are suitable only for such a case that only necessary operation functions are utilized in relatively small-scaled networks. However, if the above-mentioned conventional computer systems are applied to such a lange-scale computer system, then a total operation management could not be practically realized as a computer system. That is, in this large-scale computer system, there are many possibilities that a plurality of operation processes are combined with each other when these operation processes are executed. This is because the computers and the communication networks should be furthermore and in an integrated manner managed with respect to each of the operation processes.
In addition, since the respective operation processes are independently operated and both the computers and the communication network are separately managed, it is practically difficult to solve the problem occurring in the operation processes in correspondence with the problem occurring in the computers.
However, when all of the operation management processes are carried out by the managing computer, since communications are required between the managing computer and each of the computers, network traffics must be considered.